


le grand pas de quatre

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Heimdall ships Steve/Bucky, M/M, POV Outsider, Parallels, Pretentious ballet metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say Heimdall can see the future, but they are wrong. He does not see the future, but he has seen the past. </p><p>Sometimes, that is enough to be able to predict the next steps.</p><p>(He often wishes the future would hurry itself along, though.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	le grand pas de quatre

They say Heimdall can see the future, but they are wrong.

The future is a dance. A dance across worlds and dimensions, experienced in rounds, with pieces that weave in and out of an infinite ballroom. There is no choreographer; only languorous chaos, loosely organized. It is a sequence of pirouettes and grand jetés, of slow movements followed by dramatic upheavals.

Heimdall does not see the future, but he has seen the past. 

Sometimes, that is enough to be able to predict the next steps.

* * *

_** L’entrée ** _

There were once two boys: one sickly and the other glowing with health; one golden haired and the other shrouded in dark and pale shadows; one a changeling and the other the center of his household.

Despite their differences, they played and fought, for joy and for spleen, in equal measure. They were brothers in all but fact, and old ladies smiled to see their devotion to one another.

The sickly one was bullied early on, for his size and for his quiet strangeness; the other ceaselessly retaliated on his behalf. Their love and protection were not one-sided, though. What the outcast lacked in strength, he compensated for in cleverness; his ability to rescue was subtler but no less effective.

Few who tormented either of them were foolish enough to try it again.

Heimdall’s gaze reaches to all the cares of all the worlds, but he has never had to look far to follow this, his favorite story. The princes of Asgard provide a rest for his weary eyes, for they are always beside him, underfoot.

*

On Midgard, they call it ‘destiny’, but Heimdall alone sees the dance as it truly is—as an ever-unraveling silver spool of thread. He has learned how to follow the silky tendrils as they travel, slipping through the cracks between the worlds. They entwine their chosen dancers and herd them into formation.

The principals glisten with the reflected light of the silvery wisps that surround them.

*

Some of the dancers are spent and await replacements. Others remain on the floor, their rhythms far from complete.

A new round is beginning.

*

There are two boys: one sickly and the other glowing with health; one golden haired and the other shrouded in dark and pale shadows; one a changeling and the other the center of his household.

With so many children across so many worlds, Heimdall would never have noticed either of them, had not two silver tendrils made their way to a place called Brooklyn.

Unlike the first pair of boys—older now, but still underfoot—these families are strangers; in this overcrowded city, logic deems it unlikely the children will ever meet. Logic deems it unlikely that the wheezing orphan will even live to his next name day.

(But Heimdall has watched the dance long enough to know better. Mortal lives may be short, but their threads are just as thick. The ones around these two boys are not only thicker than usual, but curiously longer, too. The child will not die today.)

Soon after the threads appear, James’s parents expire. Guilty neighbors leave him on the stoop of a house for orphaned boys, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a tin of crackers in his hands. Lost, lonely and grieving, the first thing he does is bully another child and steal his toy.

Steven, observing the altercation from a window, runs downstairs as quickly as his thin legs will carry him. He scolds the newcomer with a weak-fisted punch that hurts little but says much.

Heimdall holds his breath for a tense moment, all the other sounds and sights of the multiverse fading into the background. Are they to be enemies, these two? For surely they have been marked for great parts in the dance, but in what configuration, he cannot tell. 

James stares for a minute, and then laughs, shaking his dark curls and letting his lips spread into an easy grin that, in the future, will become the best kind of weapon (Heimdall has seen the effectiveness of such flourishes before). Neither rage nor fear can conquer that lightning-quick smile; the moment passes and the tension ebbs.

As punishment for their acts of aggression, and deterrent against future ones, the black-clothed religious ladies of the house assign the boys to the same stack of beds and lock them together in a tiny room for the rest of the day. The plan simultaneously backfires and succeeds.

By the end of an hour, they have rechristened one another, and while the rest of the world may temporarily continue to call them by their given names, these are the ones that will be recorded in the program. Steve lends an ear to the sobs of grief Bucky has until now been stifling. An hour after that, Bucky rips a strip of cloth from his own (and only) shirt to wrap the ankle Steve sprained the day before while defending the honour of a girl in the street.

By the time they are released for supper, Steve’s eyes shine brighter than they ever have. 

And Bucky will never bully anyone again.

(Or, if he does, it won’t be his doing.)

While the two boys sleep that first night, the solitary threads that have followed them all their lives come together and tie a knot.

Despite their differences, they play and fight, for joy and for spleen, in equal measure. They become brothers in all but fact, and old ladies smile to see their devotion to one another.

Sickly Steve is bullied early on, for his size and for his quiet strangeness; Bucky ceaselessly retaliates on his behalf. Their love and protection are not one-sided, though. What Steve lacks in strength, he compensates for in cleverness; his ability to rescue is subtler but no less effective.

Few who torment either of them are foolish enough to try it again.

(Steve has a habit of picking fights, though, so while there are few repeats, there are many new adversaries.)

Their boyish escapades amuse Heimdall, as did Thor’s and Loki’s when they were small.

“You watch Midgard overmuch,” Loki chides one day, when they come to bring him apples from Yggdrasil.

“How do you know which realm I watch?”

“We played at your feet almost every day of our youth,” Thor answers, ever proud of his brother’s cleverness. “And Loki observes all. Your reports to the Allfather formed a pattern. A certain angle of your scope led to a report on a certain realm.”

“What fleeting, insignificant mortal adventure has caught your wandering eye today?” Loki asks.

“Their adventures may be fleeting,” Heimdall objects, “but they are not insignificant. What they lack in duration they make up for in dynamism. It is a lesson we of Asgard would do well to learn.”

“The dynamism of ants.” Thor laughs at his own joke. His grin is quick and full of mirth, and, like the healthy Midgardian child’s, a weapon almost as powerful as his hammer.

Midgard is small and isolated, but Thor and Loki are wrong to dismiss it. For the threads are forming a pattern that will soon link Asgard, Midgard, and Jotunheim in a furious bout of dance, the particulars of which Heimdall cannot yet envision.

* * *

_** Adage ** _

Midgard glistens as it never has before—brighter than the lights the mortals have recently invented.

The pas de chasse between Schmidt and Erskine takes up much of Heimdall’s attention, and for a short while, he is too busy to revisit the two boys. Their knotted threads still keep time in the background, not yet caught up in the larger scene. He saves them for a treat; a pleasant rest from the turmoil elsewhere. 

When he finds a moment to spare them a glance, he is reassured to see how little has changed. Bucky has grown, shot up like a rose bush; hardy, strong, and beautiful, but prickly. There’s a brown, half-healed cut on his lip—most likely a badge from a recent fight for Steve. The wound looks painful and has to smart when Bucky smiles, but that doesn’t stop him from grinning. Heimdall hopes nothing will ever stop him from grinning.

Bucky rubs a translucent cream on Steve’s pale white chest in an effort to stem the wracking, desperate gasps for air. Steve’s eyes are closed in pain, but Heimdall sees all, and now catches the rhythm, the beats of where this routine might go.

He has watched eons worth of nurses and patients, brothers and friends, comrades at arms. None of them have had the fiery look in their eyes that Bucky has as he applies the cream and strokes Steve’s hair.

But there are other types of love. 

Bucky caresses Steve too long, wipes angry tears into his sleeve, prays under his breath to gods in whom his faith is failing—prays to all but the one looking over him right now.

“Tell me, Heimdall,” Thor says with a laugh. “Who are these usurpers? Tell me their names and realms so that I may slay them.”

Heimdall shakes himself back to his environs, shifts into the short range. “What usurpers?”

“The ones who have displaced myself and Loki in the uppermost parts of your affection.”

Heimdall’s serene stance hides his discomfort. If even Thor knows of his long-standing partiality for the princes, then surely Loki has known about this weakness for even longer. 

“I am merely an observer, dispassionate and objective. I have no favorites.”

Loki hands him an apple and smiles, more like the cats they have on Midgard than like a Jotun or an Asgardian. “Lying ill becomes you, Heimdall.” 

“Indeed it does,” Thor agrees. “I may not possess the perspicacity of my brother, but as of late, when your scope is pointed towards Midgard, your gaze has taken on an almost maudlin softness. The same softness you had when we were small and you bid us farewell for the day, thinking our backs were turned so that we could not see.”

Heimdall looks at the princes beside him, and then, preferring to say nothing, back at the two mortal boys. The breathing fit has passed and they sleep curled lovingly around each other, just as Thor and Loki used to sleep. 

He knows he has been pulled in too far when he finds himself feeling— _feeling_ —feeling dismayed at the thought of them growing apart the way Thor and Loki have (even if Thor does not yet realize it).

But though their feelings are known only to Heimdall, not to one another, the two mortals love each other in more ways than Thor and Loki ever have or ever will. Perhaps that is what will save them.

There are some things he does not know, cannot foretell. In these cases, he submits to the weakness of hope, like anyone else.

*

The long-coming tempest of war engulfs all of Midgard. Heimdall’s two charges don new costumes and are finally drawn into they fray. For the first time, their ever-knotted threads must stretch to accommodate physical separation, while also beginning to dance with others. One end of the loop brushes against Erskine, and, just like Loki, Steve is small and sickly no longer. At the other end, Bucky endures a similar but darkly perverted alteration, this time at the hand of Schmidt.

It is a pas de deux, Heimdall now knows, after years of wondering. Two dancers executing the same steps, no matter where they stand on the dance floor.

*

Steve has been waltzing, quite literally now, with showgirls on a makeshift stage. He dreams and draws of something more, not knowing that the joined thread around him shrinks; each leg of his trip leads him closer to where his friend lies captive.

His superiors may be surprised when he breaks away from the company for his first solo, but Heimdall is not.

Steve, who so far has danced only on the sidelines, finally makes his grand entrance onto the infinite stage. 

A single-handed rescue. A confrontation with Schmidt. An introduction to Asgardian power. 

It is here that a new act begins, driven by the simple desire of a man to reunite with his brother. It is a pivotal day—an even more pivotal week—as they make their triumphant return to the body of their corps… 

…but the scene ends quietly, a slow and sensual duet of hands and mouths in a darkened corner, hidden from the eyes of any audience by a heavy curtain. A cadence that has been building for some time finally resolves.

Earlier, Heimdall had compared Steve and Bucky to Loki and Thor, but he no longer knows which of these young men is a parallel with which of the princes—especially not tonight, when he cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Their positions and roles rotate too constantly for that. 

The scene has become too intimate, so Heimdall shifts his gaze to the woman, alone in her quarters, but content. She is driven and strong, with a heart and purpose as clear as Steve’s. 

“Heimdall must be in love,” Loki teases, slipping the customary apple into Heimdall’s pocket. “That is the only reason the incidents of Midgard could hold such fascination for him.”

“What is she like?” Thor asks.

Peggy is only one of many points of interest on Midgard. While the princes are wrong to suspect that he harbours some impossible regard for her, his genuine admiration allows him to answer their questions without telling falsehoods. “She is a woman worthy of Asgard.”

“But she cannot be yours,” Thor commiserates. “And for that I am sorry.”

(And yet, she is not for Steve either, not when he is so clearly joined to another. Peggy has her own glorious purpose; her thread shows no sign of attaching itself to his.)

* * *

_** Variation 1 ** _

Bucky falls, as far of a plunge as one can take in the limited topography of Midgard.

Steve believes his friend to be dead and his heart to be broken. He weeps into liquor that has no effect on him.

But Heimdall knows better. 

Bucky’s body floats in an icy river. Yet he must still live, for the knot that binds them remains firm. In fact, Heimdall can no longer see the knot; the two are surrounded by a single, unbroken circle.

It is only natural that, a few days later, Steve joins his friend, if not in location, then at least in stasis. 

The exceptional length of their threads makes more sense now. They sleep, frozen and perfect, waiting in the wings for a new act to begin.

*

With the two young men no longer active in his vision, Heimdall’s attention—he still denies that it is affection—refocuses on his more troublesome Asgardian charges.

Loki’s increasing melancholy, sudden swings in temper, and his slow withdrawal from the jolly company of Thor and his friends is concerning. Loki has always enjoyed chaos, but a storm is coming, one of unprecedented strength, even for him.

Just as he was forsworn to remain uninvolved when Bucky was lost, Heimdall cannot speak of the darkness in Loki’s future. All he can do is watch.

*

On the day Loki first visits the library to research the Casket of Eternal Winter, Russian agents fish Bucky out of the water.

They keep him sedated so that he cannot smile, cannot charm, cannot use any of the perfectly ordinary defenses that make him extraordinary. They find the kernel of darkness that even years of life with Steve could not quite eradicate, and they prod until it bursts like a cancer, infecting and obliterating. 

They break him, do their best to unmake him, but Heimdall knows that as long as Steve lives, a flicker of light—a flicker of Bucky—will remain.

* * *

_** Variation 2 ** _

The Winter Soldier shoots and slashes his way through the decades. 

(Heimdall is glad the Russians have christened their monster; he does not want this creation’s atrocities attributed to Bucky’s name.)

On Midgard, they wage a war that is not a war: buttons that are never pushed, tensions that simmer but never fully boil, hatreds that retain a thin veneer of politeness. The only moves are made by the Winter Soldier, and even then, his actions and very existence are denied. 

On Asgard, Loki—just as lost inside himself as Bucky—plots and waits, simmers and hides behind double-edged words. Like the Russians, he creates mirages, monsters, and illusions, but they produce no real effect.

Until the sad day when it becomes all _too_ real. Loki unleashes icy wrath upon Heimdall himself, his silent but second-most devoted friend.

It is a dark day, indeed, and while he stands frozen on the bridge, Heimdall fears what may be in store for his other pair.

*

Loki falls in a horror of silence and cold.

No one could survive that fall, they say. Loki is gone, they say.

Thor weeps silently into his mead and refuses all attempts at comfort.

But Heimdall knows better. The thread that binds Thor to his foster brother is no more broken than the one that binds the two men currently encased in ice.

*

This is but a brief intermission.

*

Thor’s sojourn in Midgard leads to quickening connections. The Son of Coul reports to the man who finally frees Steve. When he wakes, his body is weary and his mind sad. Heimdall wonders what it must feel like to live without your other half.

(He does not have to look far for the answer; Thor dragging himself distractedly through the palace provides a clear enough picture.)

Loki, who has lain hidden by some dark magic, soon returns to view and unleashes a new bout of madness—a scheme involving a new force from far outside even Heimdall’s sight.

The stage is suddenly bigger than he has ever known.

In the battle for Midgard, players who have already acquitted themselves handsomely in solo acts join hands for a glorious sextet. Steve leads them. He even leads Thor. Two of his most beloved duets, side by side for the first time (even if two of the players are currently spinning in madness, even if Loki is the enemy throwing off the rhythms). 

It is over almost as quickly as it began. The group disbands and Thor returns Loki to Asgard in disgrace. 

The underground glass cage in which they keep him is little different from the underground glass tank in which the Winter Soldier sleeps. 

*

This phase is ended. Another begins.

*

The cost of the venture remains in question, but Heimdall never doubts that Malekith will be defeated.

This certainty, combined with a rare leave of absence, gives him the opportunity to enter the dance as he has rarely done. He has been waiting for a chance and for a reason to reunite the brothers who are too proud to come together themselves. But after so long spent in the rafters, his feet are heavy and the only role he feels comfortable in is conductor. 

It is all too easy to direct the rhythm. He has only to lead them to one another, to encourage them to traverse the same cracks between the worlds that the threads do. Their unbreakable knot takes care of the rest.

Loki falls, but this time, Thor catches him. For one moment, recent memory is forgotten, and the two brothers Heimdall has watched return.

Thor says Loki died with honour.

He’s half right.

*

For the first time since either of his two favorite stories began, Heimdall is able to predict the next movements. What is to follow on Midgard will not be so different from what has recently passed on Asgard.

The Winter Soldier comes even closer to destroying his foster brother than Loki ever did Thor, but, just as Thor reclaimed Loki from madness through the persistence of their old devotion, so does Steve draw out what remains buried within Bucky.

The spell is broken, but the weight of years Steve has not known come crashing down. Bucky disappears and Steve is left holding empty air.

They say the remorse overwhelmed him. They say Bucky took his own life.

But Steve has seen enough of how things work to know better.

It’s too bad Thor, with all his additional years, does not.

* * *

_** Coda ** _

Heimdall knows the lines he may not cross, but he has watched long enough to have found ways of reaching over them.

(And after the role he allowed himself to play in the reconciliation between Thor and Loki, he decides a second bit of conducting will hardly be noticed. This story has gone in circles long enough, he thinks; this latest separation is trying, even for his long patience.)

Thor has gone back to Midgard and to his lady love, knowing not that Loki lives on, wandering through Asgard in various disguises. Loki has learned by now that Heimdall will not betray him. Out of fond habit, he brings Heimdall apples from Yggdrasil, just as he and Thor have always done. It is an excuse to indulge in honest conversation, to see a friendly face.

“I have found the Tesseract,” Heimdall says one day as Loki lolls in a corner, letting his disguise slip for the first time all week.

“I knew not that it was gone from Odin’s vault.”

“This is why you must help me get it back.”

“Why would you tell me this? Common wisdom decrees I am not one to be trusted with such an object.”

“When have you ever heeded common wisdom? You live to prove it wrong.”

“This is a trick.”

“It is you who are the trickster, not I.”

Loki goes. Of course he does. He has never followed orders, but curiosity has always been his weakness. He soon locates Bucky, broken and shivering in a dark alleyway, his clothes ripped and shredded. Even Loki hesitates in the face of such despair, seeing a mirror of his recently low state reflected back at him. Heimdall interrupts the moment by turning his beam upon the two of them.

Bucky and Loki all but fall into the chamber. Loki is as ruffled as he can be, but half-dead Bucky barely notices; he looks around, as though in a dream. 

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asks dully upon registering the imposing figure in gold.

“I am Heimdall.” He attempts to keep his voice as grave and unmoved as possible. “Welcome to Asgard.”

The curious look Loki settles on him lets him know that he has failed to mask his partiality; however, it also provides a necessary distraction. 

Bucky, starving after weeks out in the cold like a stray dog, spots one of the apples Heimdall has purposefully left in plan sight. Like a feral animal, he pounces at it, forgetting his manners in his hunger. 

Loki sees only too late. “That fruit is not for you, mort—”

But Bucky has already taken a bite; two. Juice dribbles down his chin as he devours the precious gods-food. 

The fruit of the Yggdrasil cannot fully restore that which has been lost, but it can heal to an extent, and perfect that which remains. The dark circles under Bucky’s eyes fade; the wrinkles born, not of age, but of too much pain, smooth themselves out. As the fruit clears his mind of torture and the crippling guilt for another man’s crimes, the outdated metal lump that passes for an arm begins to glow, transforming itself into something else—some new material better than either silver or gold. Through the tears in his shirt, Loki and Heimdall watch the ungainly steel reinforcements in his collarbone and spine disappear and regrow as bone. The scars along the join heal, and the new golden limb blends seamlessly and naturally into the rest of him. It is beautiful now, more beautiful than any smith or surgeon could have devised. _Bucky_ is beautiful, renewed.

“Hey…” Bucky, transfixed and confused. He twists his arm this way and that.

“You planned this,” Loki says to Heimdall. He sees the trick but is still casting about for its purpose.

The timing of this manipulation was no accident. Thor has been spending much of his time of late with Steve, on the roof of the Man of Iron’s tower in the sky, counting lights and telling stories of their lost brothers. 

The result of Bucky’s self-inspection leads him to smile; the impervious grin of old slowly overtakes his features. It blossoms so that its full expression is the first thing Steve sees when he tumbles into the chamber. Bucky instinctively runs to steady his friend on his feet. 

“So big, and you still can’t hold yourself up without me,” he jests. “How’d you even manage while I was gone?”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

“Loki?” 

Loki makes a show of grimacing, but he allows himself to be smothered.

(Only Heimdall sees the soft smile and hears the even softer sigh of relief.)

“Have a care for his tonsils, Captain,” Loki quips a few minutes later from the crook of Thor’s elbow. “If your tongue pushes any further down his throat, you may dislodge them.”

At this, Steve and Bucky separate their mouths but not their arms as they choke back embarrassed peals of laughter. 

“Loki shares your joy,” Thor explains to his friend, “but he is ill-equipped to express it. So, instead, he teases.” He goes to shake Bucky’s hand. “Many tales have I heard of you, Soldier of Winter. Even were you not my captain’s dearest companion, I would count myself lucky to welcome such a fearsome warrior to our group.”

“My name’s Bucky,” is the friendly but firm reply. “Pleased to meet you.”

Thor nods, understanding. “Welcome, friend Bucky. I am Thor. And this is my jackanapes of a brother, Loki.”

Heimdall’s four favorites—the quartet he has been watching these long years—has finally assembled. The chamber has always been kept magically spotless, but he thinks some dust from the Midgardians’ clothing must have gotten into his eye, because…

“I think we have found our usurpers, brother,” Loki remarks upon seeing the tears. “But I doubt slaying your beloved captain will regain us the throne of Heimdall’s heart.”

“They have a tale on Midgard,” Heimdall relates by way of explanation. “A fable set during the war that separated these two men beside you. Four siblings prophesied to reign together, each occupying one of the four thrones of the same realm.”

“Steve and I have seen a film of this tale. Stark bade us watch it,” Thor says, and then looks seriously at Loki. “Even the traitor, who betrayed them for a bid at a solo crown, was redeemed, and ruled as wisest of the group. I thought of you as we watched.”

“I know the tale even better than you, brother. You saw the film, but I read the book during my sojourn on Midgard.”

At Thor’s and Steve’s expressions of surprise, Loki shrugs. “Attempting to conquer a realm only takes up so many hours of the day. I had a surfeit of time on my hands, and the contents of the libraries in my dwellings were… paltry.”

“I guess I’m the only one here who has no idea what you’re all talking about,” Bucky says before turning to Heimdall. “I actually have no idea what’s even happening right now, just so you all know. This weirdo—” he points at Loki. “—appears out of thin air and the next thing I know I’m here eating an apple and my arm’s all different, and now Steve and this joker in a cape who talks like the bible are here, and you’ve got yellow eyes, and this room is literally spinning… But I’m sensing this new and even weirder part of the conversation is some metaphor for how the four of us are…” He makes a face. “I’m getting the feeling you’re the reason we’re all here together right now and I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, but this is some real cheesy shit and I just met you.”

“Bucky!” Steve whispers, shocked, but doesn’t get far because Bucky cuts him off.

“And given what I intend to do to Steve tonight, I’d rather not be called brothers.” 

Steve turns as red as Thor’s cape.

Heimdall simply smiles. No, they are none of them related, but these four are the purest example that blood means nothing, never has. It is only the threads that matter, and while they have all been standing together, something new has happened; the two silver circles that surround each pair have slipped and hooked and retied themselves, now linked forevermore into a figure eight as infinite as the stones the dance will soon lead them to protect. 

They are no longer paralleling pas de deux, but rather, a pas de quatre, ready to star in the next act.

The future has finally arrived.

(It took long enough.)


End file.
